This Savage Love

“I’ve booked an appointment for you at the clinic in Baltimore. Here’s the address. You have two days to get there. Don’t be late, and don’t change your mind,” My dance agent, Angel, spat at me tersely, handing me a slip of her designer notepaper before dismissing me.

The road in front of me would be impossible if I kept the baby, I thought. My livelihood depended upon a slim, healthy, not-pregnant body. In two or three months, I wouldn’t be able to waddle onto a stage in my condition; plus, I was working in Canada on a visa and had no health care or permanent place of residence.

Angel had convinced me getting an abortion was the most sensible thing to do, especially considering the father wanted nothing to do with us and had even forgotten how to speak English when I gave him the news. He spoke English fine six weeks ago when he was trying to get me into his bed. Maybe that’s all the English he knew. It didn’t matter. I only called him because I felt a man should know.

I left Angel’s office on Queen Street and wound my way through the streets of Toronto to the QEW, just barely missing an accident in a one-way tunnel that some idiot thought was two-way. The idiot was me, and I had to pull into a parking lot to catch my breath, wipe my eyes, and slow my heart rate before setting off again. I was not in the best emotional shape for this long, shameful trip that was going to end in death for one of us.

Catholicism was firmly in my past, being a stripper and all. Perhaps my old religion was haunting me as I contemplated ending this tiny life. Or maybe it was the fear of a medical procedure, which I was certain would involve a needle or needles. Whatever it was, my mind spun out of control during the scary fifteen-hour drive. Between finding myself lost most of the time and being horrified about what they would do to me when I reached my destination, I’m surprised I didn’t have a stroke or seizure of some kind.

It was just past dawn on Tuesday morning when I pulled in front of a rundown, nondescript brownstone building with no signage other than street numbers that matched the paper Angel had given me. Bottles in brown paper bags littered the sidewalk leading up to the building, and hungover street people leaned against adjacent buildings, sleeping it off. Instinctively, I locked all the doors and kept the motor running. No way was I walking to that building until signs of life appeared through the filthy windows or staff began to show up.

Perhaps I prayed during that time. I can’t remember. I do remember suddenly feeling protective of the little intruder inside of me. Before that morning, “the baby” was simply a phrase, as was pregnant or pregnancy. It was a thing. A condition. It somehow did not relate to me at all. That day changed my definition of what ailed me. I was pregnant. I would be having a baby. A baby was a miracle. Something I had no right to interfere with. I thought, ‘ I wouldn’t even use the restroom in that building. Do I really want to climb up on their germy operating table and let them take this baby out of me here? What a horrible place for a baby to die.’

No way. Just no way. I couldn’t get away from there fast enough as I backtracked through the neglected neighborhood and found my way to Route 81 North. That’s the day I became a mother for the first time. Not the moment of conception. Not the day I received the results of the pregnancy test. Motherhood for me began when the primal urge to protect my child awakened within me. That sacred connection prompts a fierce, savage type of love stronger than the love of a friend or romantic love, no matter how intense. Nothing compares with the love of a mother for her children.

This ravaging love would put me to the test, time after time. Plumbing the depths of my soul and challenging my courage, tenacity, and emotional strength. Then, eventually, it would shatter me, leaving me to crawl blindly through the grey morass of depression, searching for a reason to live.

Love can do that to a person.